Perpetual Arrivals

These poems were written throughout the nineties before global economics, cellphones, The Internet, and fears of terrorism became commonplace. It was a time of exciting change, the former USSR having collapsed and much of Eastern Europe suffering painful yet hopeful upheavals. In the U.S., jobs were plentiful and soldiers weren’t being shipped off to foreign wars in large numbers. More

These poems were written throughout the nineties before global economics, cellphones, The Internet, and fears of terrorism became commonplace. It was a time of exciting change, the former USSR having collapsed and much of Eastern Europe suffering painful yet hopeful upheavals. In the U.S., jobs were plentiful and soldiers weren’t being shipped off to foreign wars in large numbers.

As a young man, I suffered the delusion of thinking it would always be this way. I kept furious journals, wanting to blend my experiences of West meeting East, and to capture the up-tempo, ground-breaking, sometimes hedonistic spirit of those times.

I’ve weaved the U.S. poems like strands of DNA through the poems about the former USSR, and Romania. The book is structured in quadrants based on the four seasons, and the primary directions of any compass. I’ve prefaced each quadrant with a quotation from an author I was absorbed in at that time.

As far as arrivals are concerned, I’m inclined to say I’ve never gotten there, but I’ve experienced small plateaus and perceptions that have helped me define better an ultimate destination other than death – if there is one.

Looking back, the nineties seem an insouciantly naïve and selfish decade that marked the end of a long and familiar romantic attachment, and the start of something frighteningly new.

John Flynn (www.basilrosa.com), who also writes as Basil Rosa, has published five poetry chapbooks, a book of poems, Moments Between Cities, and translations from the Romanian of Nicolae Dabija, Blackbird Once Wild Now Tame. He’s earned awards from New England Poetry Club, and U.S. Peace Corps. His novel Heaven Is A City Where Your Language Isn’t Spoken is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press (www.cervenabarvapress.com).